Leung's article starts from a quotation by Šarćevič, who writes: “While lawyers cannot expect translators to produce parallel texts which are equal in meaning, they do expect them to produce parallel texts which are equal in legal effect. Thus the translator’s main task is to produce a text that will lead to the same legal effects in practice”. This paper explores the implications of such an approach to the assessment of the ‘success’ of a piece of legal translation and bilingual legal drafting to (a) general translation theory, and (b) legal translation assessment practice in the academic context.